


Spin me around, now, I don't wanna go home

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Fluff, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-18 13:31:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3571430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing better than a magical meet-cute, is there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spin me around, now, I don't wanna go home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelionkingsguard (brooklynboos)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brooklynboos/gifts).



> Companion mix [here](http://8tracks.com/niamhlikesmusic/spin-me-around-now-i-don-t-wanna-go-home#smart_id) on 8tracks.

Sansa has her phone in one hand (she’s on level 127 of Candy Crush, and she is going to hit level 200 before Arya) and a ball of spindling-spiking ice crystals in the other, just so she isn’t idle while she waits for her drink. It’s a warm enough day that no one will be troubled by the chill, and besides, there’s a little girl sitting at the table under the round window who’s watching with wide eyes, clapping whenever the light catches the ice just right.

“I’d best keep my distance, hadn’t I?” someone says while she’s spiderwebbing frost down her fingers and over her hand, between the bangles jingling on her wrist. Her bangles are all plain silver, because that shows up the detail of the frost best, and they shine bright when she lowers her hand.

“Excuse me?” she says, arching one eyebrow at the tall, slim man who teased her. He’s wearing the kind of steel-frame glasses Dad wears, but they look much cooler on him, and has a mop of thick, curly hair, shorn short at the sides. And he’s taller than me, Sansa reminds herself, because that seems to be an increasingly rare phenomenon, especially when she’s wearing high shoes. “Do I know you?”

“I only meant the ice,” he explains, his smile faltering. She feels a little sorry for being so sharp, but she’s used to weird people hitting on her, and she’s used to having to get rid of them. He’s blushing, though, and looks as if he’s about to apologise. “Polar opposites, you see? I must seem terribly rude - I’ve never been very good at funny, I’m afraid.”

He tips his head to the left, drawing her eyes to the cane he’s leaning on - the cane that’s sprouting shiny new tendrils that thorn and blossom with golden roses as they twine up his arm to the elbow.

“Not many people are comfortable enough with a gift like yours to play with it,” he says, which isn’t untrue - elemental powers are notoriously difficult to control, after all. “I was curious, and seem to have put my foot in my mouth, as usual. Do forgive me - I was only curious about where such a young woman might have learned such perfect control.”

“I’m a Stark,” she admits, rolling her eyes when his eyebrows shoot toward his hairline. “Sansa - my father is Ned.”

“And I’m a Tyrell,” he says, holding out his hand in greeting, not flinching at the last few shards of frost clinging to her fingers when she shakes it. “Willas, Mace’s eldest. A pleasure.”

 

* * *

 

Mace Tyrell of Highgarden’s eldest son is just as charming as Sansa was warned a Tyrell would be, and she doesn’t mind at all. He’s got a knack for putting her at her ease which, according to Robb’s stories of Mace’s youngest son and Dad’s stories of Mace himself, does not run in the family, but Sansa likes it all the same.

She ends up sitting in the coffee shop with Willas for the whole of her lunch hour, talking about everything from the recent anti-mage protests in the city to the fact that she doesn’t actually drink coffee of any sort.

“I like tea,” she says firmly, taking a long sip of her white jasmine peach tea just to prove her point. “Coffee makes me gag - not the case for you, I can see.”

She doesn’t add that tea, when cold, is generally drinkable, but cold coffee is an abomination, unless it’s one of those especially made iced ones. Sometimes, things in her hands just cool down, so it’s best to stick with something that isn’t ruined by the chill.

There’s a reason hot chocolate has never been very popular in Winterfell, after all.

“I’d stop functioning without coffee and sugar,” he admits. His drink has two shots of espresso and at least three different syrup shots - she knows, because they each bought the other a refill, and she nearly died of sympathetic hyperglycemic shock when she saw what they were putting into Willas’ cup - and looks like hot chocolate, even though she’s fairly sure there isn’t any chocolate involved. “The growing thing is exhausting, so the coffee helps there, and it burns off calories like nobody’s business - hence the high sugar intake.”

“And you have a sweet tooth,” Sansa points out, because she saw the sheer pleasure on his face when he took his first sip. “Don’t deny it - nobody drinks something like that just for the calories. That’s what powerbars are for.”

“Yes, but they taste of cardboard,” he reasons, grinning over the rim of his cup. “I can’t imagine you’d drink that awful chilled tomato soup stuff-”

“Gazpacho?”

“That, yes. You wouldn’t drink that just because it won’t cool off and go funny when a bowl of piping hot cream of tomato is on offer, would you?”

“I don’t know,” Sansa says. “I might. It’s quite nice, actually-”

“I bet you wouldn’t,” he cuts in. “I bet if we were in a restaurant, and gazpacho and cream of tomato were starter options, you’d go for the cream of tomato.”

“Is that an offer?”

He blinks, and goes pink, and then smiles.

“To hell with it,” he says. “Let’s go out to dinner. I’m free Friday, if that suits you?”

 

* * *

 

Sansa works as a triage nurse, in KL General. Her scrubs are dark navy, because they usually end up covered in blood and vomit and pee and other unpleasantness, and the colour masks the stains, and she’s one of only two nurses in A+E who doesn’t have to wear gloves - bacteria can’t survive on her hands, and the same is true for Sarella Martell. Sarella’s a pyromage and Sansa’s a cryomage, and extremes of heat and cold kill off all but the most daring infectious microorganisms.

Sansa’s wrist deep in some poor sod’s chest cavity - cryogenesis, if paired with cryokinesis, is an excellent non-chemical local anaesthetic, since she can control the ice she creates and prevent frostbite, so of course she always ends up with the most glamorous jobs - when Sarelle arrives to cauterise the source of the bleeding (they’ve discovered that the immediate jump from numbing cold to numbing heat means there’s no chance for pain) and huffs “I hear you met one of the hippies yesterday, Staff Nurse Stark.”

The animosity between the Martells and Tyrells is legendary - fire and growth aren’t necessarily friends - so Sansa isn’t surprised that Sarella’s heard, or that she’s pissed about it.

“He was very nice,” she says, drawing her hands back sharply so Sarella can dive in and do her thing. “We’re going for dinner at the weekend.”

Ice and fire don’t get on very well, either, so while Sansa generally likes Sarella, it’s just not in their natures to be friends.

“To each their own,” Sarella says, withdrawing her hands from the patient’s chest and motioning for someone to come forward and close him up - the non-magical staff are always a little wary of how casual magical staff are, at first, and the new nurses are easy to pick out of the crowd that steps forward - “but if I were you, I’d go for someone a little… Warmer.”

There’s meanness in that - Sansa’s last boyfriend, Joffrey, was a pyrogensist, able to produce fire but not really able to control it, and he would have burned the hospital down when she dumped him if her cryogenisis hadn’t been so much stronger than his pyro.

“Haha,” she says instead of biting back. She holds her hands under the soap dispenser when Sarella pumps it with her elbow, then returns the favour. “As if you can talk, with a _wavedancer_ on your arm.”

Asha Greyjoy is a very attractive woman, Sansa is not denying that, but even so. A _wavedancer._

 

* * *

 

Sansa’s superintendent is… A creep.

Mr. Baelish was a friend of Mum’s, way back when, and has some kind of vague, oily power, one that messes with your perception, so Sansa is always sure to keep her own magic active when he’s nearby - she’s learned the hard way that it helps counteract his, which means he can’t swindle you out of extra rent money without you even realising it.

She manages to avoid him on Friday night when she’s on her way out - she and Willas agreed to meet at the restaurant, because there’s a certain power in inviting someone into your home, and a different kind of power in relying on them for transport. Bran the cryomancer, as family oracle, could explain the mysticism of it better, but Sansa knows that she’s best off just meeting him there, and that’s enough to be getting on with.

She’s a little early, but it’s gratifying to see that he’s earlier still. He’s sitting in the waiting area just inside the doors, elegant in a three piece suit and a retro-fitted wheelchair. With that old-style wheelchair and the way his hair is combed, he looks like he came right out of one of the black and white movies Sansa used to watch every Friday night with Mum and Arya, after control lessons with Uncle Ben.

“Hi,” he says, smiling massively when he sees her. “Sorry about the chair - an incident today at work left me without even my non-magical prosthesis. You look… Stunning.”

“Don’t apologise,” she tells him, bending down to kiss his cheek (and maybe let him get a glimpse down her dress, a peek of dark blue silk and creamy lace - the retro thing _really_ does it for her, okay?). “You look very dapper.”

The restaurant is elegant, expensive but not ostentatious, and Sansa laughs aloud when Willas too-innocently points out that both gazpacho and cream of tomato soup are on the menu. She orders stuffed potato skins, just to spite him, and fish pie, and watches as he hesitates before ordering two starters and two mains. The waitress doesn’t bat an eyelid - probably because of the Tyrell signet glinting on Willas’ little finger, maybe because she has the slightly absent air of a psychic - and slips off with their order and a smile.

“So, tell me about this _incident_ at work.”

 

* * *

 

Willas’ incident, he tells her over three bottles of wine, four deserts, and a departure to the smoking terrace, where Willas produces a pipe that gives off floral-smelling pink-tinged smoke, involved a horse, a Tupperware of ham and coleslaw sandwiches, Willas’ father, and an unfortunately sprouting oak stall.

Apparently, a good solid kick to the femur had cracked the bone, meaning the healers had to be called in - and now his leg is too tender for the non-magical prosthesis, and the lingering healing magic means he can’t wear the magical one.

Sansa, by the time he finishes his story, which was long and funny and told with many tangents about music and politics and magic and _music_ , is drunk enough and enjoying herself so much that she finds herself inviting Willas first to share a taxi, and then inviting him up for a nightcap.

The lift, by some miracle, is working, and he tugs her down into his lap as they wait for it to reach Sansa’s floor, and rests his head on her shoulder.

“I would very much like to sleep with you now,” he mumbles against her skin, warm and smelling of cedar and saddle leather, “but I fear I might be too drunk.”

It takes four tries to get her key in the lock, half because she’s absolutely sloshed and half because she’s giggling so hard, and in the end they end up with nightcaps of blood orange juice, because they can’t find anything stronger, and they fall asleep on the couch with one of the music channels playing.

Sansa wakes up in the morning to a cherry blossom growing from her coffee table, scattering sweet-smelling blossoms all over her living space, and Willas apologises for falling asleep with his hand touching the table-top.

“If you promise not to bring any more of my furniture back to life,” she tells him, “I might show you the bedroom next time.”

 


End file.
